


Don't Let Me Go

by gremlins-came-and-got-me (Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark)



Series: If I'm Falling [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Chris Tries, Derek is broken, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kate was Evil, M/M, Object Insertion (mentioned), PTSD, Panic Attack (brief), Rape/Non-con Elements, underage (mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-06
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:38:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7405807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark/pseuds/gremlins-came-and-got-me
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek’s spent so long falling into older women’s beds that it takes him longer than he wants to admit that he’s moved on and is now falling into older men’s beds. The first night he spends with Chris Argent is after. After he saves his life at the Sheriff’s Station and after he tries to kill him. They don’t do anything. Kate didn’t either the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Let Me Go

**Author's Note:**

> Read the tags, heed any warnings.
> 
> Also, spoilers through Season 4 (and make note: this was mostly written during the end of 2015 with absolutely no regard to any further canon).
> 
> Unbetaed, all mistakes are my own.
> 
> Apologies for any medical mistakes.
> 
> Originally posted on my Tumblr: [1989dreamer](http://1989dreamer.tumblr.com/)

~*~

Derek’s spent so long falling into older women’s beds that it takes him longer than he wants to admit that he’s moved on and is now falling into older men’s beds.

The first night he spends with Chris Argent is after. After he saves his life at the Sheriff’s Station and after he tries to kill him.

They don’t do anything. Kate didn’t either the first time.

Instead, Chris sleeps with his face pressed against Derek’s neck, breath ghosting over his throat, an arm thrown over his waist, fingers curled in the hem of his shirt.

Derek pretends it’s okay, like he’s not convulsively swallowing down his growing nausea, like it’s not breaking him.

He shifts slowly, loosening Chris’s hold on him until he can slide off the bed. He hunches down, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them.

Above him, Chris turns over, sighing as he goes. He’s awake, Derek senses, tasting the anger (disappointment) wafting down to him.

“Come back to bed, Derek,” Chris says, voice rough with sleep. He sounds nothing like Kate, but still his stomach drops, hearing her commanding him.

“I don’t want to,” he replies softly, picking a spot on the wall to stare at. He wills away the tears he feels edging up his throat, burning his eyes. He shivers slightly, when Chris crawls to the side of the bed, feels his eyes rake down his back.

“It’s late, and although you are slightly more nocturnal than me, even you need sleep.”

Chris’s hand, calloused and warm, drops onto Derek’s neck, and he growls low, warning. Chris doesn’t move, hand pressing down, forcing Derek’s cheek against his knee. Derek growls again, and Chris lets him go.

“Bed,” he says, and the resemblance to Kate punches through Derek. He winces, shaking his head and surging forward to dry heave and gasp. “Hey, now,” Chris says, soothingly. “Derek, what’s wrong?”

He senses Chris climbing off the bed and reaching for him again. More than anything, he’s startled when a sob breaks out of him. He glances back and finds Chris staring at him with an expression of anger (regret).

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Chris says, forcing his eyes to soften, his face to slacken, and Derek wants to believe him, but Kate had said that too, and look what happened.

“I’m not,” he insists, crouching down and spreading his arms. Derek blinks at him.

“I want to trust you,” he whispers, and Chris nods. Then he lunges forward, wrapping his arms around Derek and just holding him while Derek panics, gasping, breath hitching painfully, fighting with no coordination and barely any will.

It’s a little like being sixteen and stuck on a machine that electrocutes and _thrusts_ and _hurts_.

It takes him far too long to squirm free, panting and sobbing in turns and scrubbing at the tears he couldn’t hold back.

Chris looks apologetic, offering a hand to help Derek back to the bed. It’s half an hour before Derek is calm enough to let Chris touch him again, and they settle carefully, Chris lying flat on his back, Derek on his side watching as the hunter stares at the ceiling.

Derek sniffles softly, trying to breathe through his mouth so Chris won’t know he’s still crying. Still wrapped in the ghost of a memory.

“If you can,” Chris begins, swallows thickly, tries again, “if you are able, I’d like to know what my sister did to you.”

He glances down, staring at Derek from the corner of his eye, and Derek sees something (tears?) shimmering in his eyes. He hiccups a little, thinking over it. He nods and opens his mouth.

Before he can speak, though, Chris’s phone goes off, and Derek startles while Chris jumps to answer it. He paces quietly, murmuring questions and half-statements into the phone. Derek ignores him in favor of drying his face, certain the tears have stopped now.

“It’s Allison and Kira. Deaton’s helping them with Isaac and the twins.”

Derek thinks back to the fly Chris had picked out of his ear. He wonders if it has anything to do with how he’s feeling now. “Are they okay?” he asks, and they both pretend his voice isn’t shaking, that  _he’s_  not still shaking.

Chris nods, setting the phone down again. He holds out his hand as he sits on the bed, and Derek rolls until it presses against his back, between his shoulder blades. Absently (carefully), Chris strokes over the material, fingers brushing the back of his neck and ghosting down to the edge of his shirt.

Derek sighs softly, hiccupping again even though he’s definitely not crying now. The fist in his chest unfurls one knuckle at a time, and he draws in a shaky breath. Chris’s other hand comes to rest on his head, fingers loosely gathering some hair as the hunter hums under his breath.

“I used to sing a lullaby to Allison when she couldn’t sleep,” he explains, shifting Derek until they’re lying side by side again, Derek curled into him, Chris still petting his back and head. “She never did sleep while I sang, but if I stopped, she’d start crying again.”

“I don’t need a lullaby,” Derek says, and Chris laughs quietly.

“Yeah, you do,” he says. “But, first, how’d you like to tell me about Kate?”

His fingers tighten as if he expects Derek to pull away, and he wants to, but he also kind of wants to stay exactly where he is now.

“Kate was my first,” he whispers, testing the words. When they don’t choke him, he sighs and curls tighter against Chris, shuddering as Chris keeps moving his hand. It’s soothing and comforting and those are two things Derek hasn’t let himself feel for a very long time.

“She promised me the world.” He chuckles mirthlessly, more of a sob than a laugh, tears threatening again. He tenses under Chris’s hand and Chris pauses until he takes in a shuddery breath, hand moving slowly again when Derek’s breath evens a little. “I guess she made good on her promise. Laura took me away from Beacon Hills because a psychiatrist thought it would help.”

“Then Peter happened.”

“Yeah, and my world shrank again.”

“But, that’s not all she did, is it?”

“I,” he says. Pauses, listens to Chris’s heartbeat, slow and steady. “She called it ‘hot, crazy sex.’ And maybe at first it was. I don’t know. I didn’t have a scale to judge it on.” He pauses again, longer this time, seeking comfort in the way Chris’s hand keeps moving up and down his back again, the way his heartbeat stays the same. Eventually though, Chris clears his throat.

“She used to have this game where she’d feed me all kinds of things—oysters, strawberries, figs. The works. Used to make me sick until I’d throw up and then she’d stick things in me—sometimes knives, and other things, places. Punishment.”

Chris’s heartbeat picks up, a slight patter that alarms Derek. He’s never told anyone what she did. Not even that psychiatrist. And he’s not sure Chris is willing to hear it, despite what he says. It’s his sister. Derek knows if someone made a claim against Laura, he’d probably close his ears too.

“Hey, she’s not going to hurt you anymore,” Chris promises, and it’s empty. Because, Derek knows, Kate hurts him every day. Every time he remembers, she gets to dig in a little deeper.

He forces himself to breathe, aware of how it stutters into his body, like it’s not enough and it will never be enough, and Chris starts humming again. Derek whimpers, remembering the press of the bat. The sting of the peppers. The taste of Kate.

It’s enough to have him crawling over Chris to dry heave onto the floor again. This time though, bile actually burns its way out of his throat, splattering harshly against the boards.

Chris doesn’t say anything but he keeps a hand on Derek’s back, rubbing small circles.

“I’m sorry,” Derek whispers, wiping at his mouth. He lets Chris pull him back, lets himself be tucked under the blankets. “I-I don’t think I can—”

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have asked you to.”

“But someone needs to know.” Someone other than Derek.

He runs a hand over his face, poking at the tears running down his face. Again. Chris’s hand settles on his shoulder, fingers splayed down over his chest. It’s such a Kate-gesture that Derek gasps out loud. Immediately, Chris draws his hand back.

“It’s been over six years,” Derek murmurs. “I should be over what she did. I  _want_  to be over it.”

Chris hums again, his heartbeat settling back to that steady rhythm. Derek presses his ear over it, breathing deeply and letting himself feel soothed and comforted again. Chris’s voice rumbles in his ear as he says, “You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for. Even if you want something, sometimes you just have to let time heal the wounds. And who’s to say how much time it takes?”

Then he sings, soft, voice creaking with it, and Derek lets himself drift off, wondering if it’s a step he’s taking when Chris’s hand returns to its position of palm against his chest and it doesn’t panic him. Much.

He mumbles a good night and Chris kisses the top of his head.

It really feels like a step towards healing, Derek thinks when he doesn’t even react to it. Maybe he’s just too tired to worry right now. His limbs feel like lead, and his face is sticky with drying tears. He even feels some snot leaking out to pool on Chris’s shirt. Chris is right though, hard as he tries, he’s not really a nocturnal creature, never has been. It’s partly why Kate used to keep him up all night, especially right before a test.

He tamps down that thought quickly, unwilling to let Kate ruin the peacefulness Chris has inspired.

Chris sings in French, and Derek follows along, mouthing the syllables and translating them to English even though he feels himself floating off.

He starts awake a few times as he drowses, Chris leaning closer, hooking his chin over Derek’s head, hands pressing warmth into his body.

A blink, a steady heartbeat, a slow breath, and Derek feels himself finally fall, relaxing into the safety Chris offers.

Maybe it won’t be so bad this time.

Maybe he won’t wake up with a scream on his lips and terror in every pore.

Maybe.

~ Fin ~

**Author's Note:**

> I have my own canon for this series of fics (eight in all, and only two haven't been written). I think it was established that the Hale fire happened in January of 2005. The outline I'd written myself has the fire happening in November of 2005 with much of Kate and Derek's "relationship" occurring before his 17th birthday.
> 
> I remember watching (probably The Tell, in all honesty, and then Formality) and thinking "Kate has probably raped Derek before this encounter." That more than anything was the inspiration for this series.
> 
> I apologize if my tags are inadequate. Please don't hesitate to let me know if something bothers you, needs more tags, or even if you just liked it.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
